Best Methods for Meeting the Goals of Environmental and Place-Based Education in Short-Term and Immersive Undergraduate Settings

This capstone sought to answer the following question: what are the best instructional methods for meeting the goals of place-based and environmental education in a short-term, immersive undergraduate setting? While place-based education and environmental education have been exhaustively studied for younger learners, a dearth of research exists in their application for college students. Through a review of the literature and the execution of the project, a January interim course for college students studying the Driftless Region, it was determined that several factors influence successful and meaningful learning for college students. Most notably, discussion, experiential learning, and engagement with community members must be emphasized; when conducting assessment, participation, journals, and hands-on summative projects are better representations of student learning than long-form papers or tests. Findings suggest immense potential for rapid learning and personal growth through courses of this nature, but significantly more research is needed to better understand how college students learn in these settings and towards these educational goals

The role of preaching in establishing and implementing a healing ministry in the Lakeview Free Methodist church of Seattle, Washington

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1662/thumbnail.jp

A study exploring the educational needs of African-American pastors\u27 wives within Baptist congregations

For many years, the role of the pastor\u27s wife has been an emerging role in American religious history (Sweet, 1983). While on their journey in building and nurturing their relationship with God, supporting their husbands, families, congregations, and communities, pastors\u27 wives have experienced joys and blessings as well as challenges and issues. A tremendous joy for some pastors\u27 wives has been the privilege, the opportunity, and the honor to serve, minister to, assist and care for others. However, one major challenge for many pastors\u27 wives has been preparedness, or the lack of preparedness, knowledge, and instruction (Obleton, 1996). Wives of pastors are a large population of adult learners in need of educational programming opportunities. Providing adult and continuing education courses is one viable option and a resource that could assist with the needed knowledge, skills, and abilities for their role in ministry.;The primary purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the educational needs of African-American pastors\u27 wives from the perspective and voice of the participants. to explore these educational needs, Maslow\u27s Hierarchy of Needs was used as a framework. The participants for this study included three educational planning partner groups or a triangular component that encompassed adult learners, specialists, and educators. For the purposes of this study, the adult learners included a sample of five African-American pastors\u27 wives. The specialists included persons who had been in a leadership role in a ministers\u27 wives organization. The convenience sample for this group included four participants. Finally, the educators, were the administrators or the implementors from selected higher education institutions or religiously affiliated organizations who offered adult and continuing education, and had interacted with African-American pastors\u27 wives. The educators included a sample of four participants. In total, the 13 participants used in this study were African-American, affiliated with the Baptist denomination in the United States, and affiliated with, representative of, or had exposure to selected African-American church congregations in Virginia.;Based on the design and parameters of this study, phenomenology was employed as the methodological perspective to enter the field of perception of several individuals, while looking for and making meaning of their experiences (Creswell, 1998, pp. 31, 51). as a result, data collection was accomplished by using semi-structured interviews.;The results from the interviews in this exploratory process were presented in two components. The first component provided narrative descriptions on each participant. The second component utilized the constant comparative method to analyze the transcriptions from all 13 interviews. From the coded transcriptions, both within-case analysis to draw out prominent themes, and cross-case analysis to examine the data in terms of similarities and differences between the three participant groups was performed. The data, descriptions, and results provided in this study could be used to inform practice relative to: educational programming for pastors\u27 wives, clergy families, religious higher education, adult and continuing education, counseling, pastoral care, and WomanistCare

Black Hole Binaries in AGN Accretion Discs II: Gas Effects on Black Hole Satellite Scatterings

The black hole (BH) binaries in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are expected to form mainly through scattering encounters in the ambient gaseous medium. Recent simulations, including our own, have confirmed this formation pathway is highly efficient. We perform 3D smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) simulations of BH scattering encounters in AGN disks. Using a range of impact parameters, we probe the necessary conditions for binary capture and how different orbital trajectories affect the dissipative effects from the gas. We identify a single range of impact parameters, typically of width $\sim0.86-1.59$ binary Hill radii depending on AGN disk density, that reliably leads to binary formation. The periapsis of the first encounter is the primary variable that determines the outcome of the initial scattering. We find an associated power-law between the energy dissipated and the periapsis depth to be $\Delta E\propto r^{-b}$ with $b=0.42\pm0.16$, where deeper encounters dissipate more energy. Excluding accretion physics does not significantly alter these results. We identify the region of parameter space in initial energy vs impact parameter where a scattering leads to binary formation. Based on our findings, we provide a ready-to-use analytic criterion that utilises these two pre-encounter parameters to determine the outcome of an encounter, with a reliability rate of >90\%. As the criterion is based directly on our simulations, it provides a reliable and highly physically motivated criterion for predicting binary scattering outcomes which can be used in population studies of BH binaries and mergers around AGN.Comment: 20 pages, 19 figure

Using the Contextualized Interaction Model to examine changes in teacher beliefs

With the increased importance placed on the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields throughout the world but particularly in the United States, research in mathematics education has become widely recognized as critical to efforts to improve the ability of U. S. students to compete in a global market. A key focus of this movement has included efforts to improve the teaching of mathematics. Unfortunately, changes in teachers’ practices have been slow to evolve. Researchers have found that teachers’ beliefs are a critical barrier to enacting change. Though the relationship between teacher beliefs and practices has been studied since the early 80’s, a consistent and encompassing model for the interaction between teachers’ beliefs and practices has not emerged. This paper presents a proposed model of teacher change, the Contextualized Interaction Model, and the findings of a multiple case study which utilized the model to examine the changes in the beliefs of three elementary teachers engaged in a professional development program. The proposed model was found to accurately include the various factors which appear to interact with teacher beliefs though it was altered to include the impact of the curriculum as a key factor. The various contextual factors represented by the proposed model were found to profoundly impact the alignment between teachers’ beliefs and practices

Chemical Fixation of CO2 in Coal Combustion Products and Recycling through Biosystems

This Annual Technical Progress Report presents the principle results in enhanced growth of algae using coal combustion products as a catalyst to increase bicarbonate levels in solution. A co-current reactor is present that increases the gas phase to bicarbonate transfer rate by a factor of five to nine. The bicarbonate concentration at a given pH is approximately double that obtained using a control column of similar construction. Algae growth experiments were performed under laboratory conditions to obtain baseline production rates and to perfect experimental methods. The final product of this initial phase in algae production is presented

CHEMICAL FIXATION OF CO2 IN COAL COMBUSTION PRODUCTS AND RECYCLING THROUGH BIOSYSTEMS

This Annual Technical Progress Report presents the principle results in enhanced growth of algae using coal combustion products as a catalyst to increase bicarbonate levels in solution. A co-current reactor is present that increases the gas phase to bicarbonate transfer rate by a factor of five to nine. The bicarbonate concentration at a given pH is approximately double that obtained using a control column of similar construction. Algae growth experiments were performed under laboratory conditions to obtain baseline production rates and to perfect experimental methods. The final product of this initial phase in algae production is presented. Algal growth can be limited by several factors, including the level of bicarbonate available for photosynthesis, the pH of the growth solution, nutrient levels, and the size of the cell population, which determines the available space for additional growth. In order to supply additional CO2 to increase photosynthesis and algal biomass production, fly ash reactor has been demonstrated to increase the available CO2 in solution above the limits that are achievable with dissolved gas alone. The amount of dissolved CO2 can be used to control pH for optimum growth. Periodic harvesting of algae can be used to maintain algae in the exponential, rapid growth phase. An 800 liter scale up demonstrated that larger scale production is possible. The larger experiment demonstrated that indirect addition of CO2 is feasible and produces significantly less stress on the algal system. With better harvesting methods, nutrient management, and carbon dioxide management, an annual biomass harvest of about 9,000 metric tons per square kilometer (36 MT per acre) appears to be feasible. To sequester carbon, the algal biomass needs to be placed in a permanent location. If drying is undesirable, the biomass will eventually begin to aerobically decompose. It was demonstrated that algal biomass is a suitable feed to an anaerobic digester to produce methane. The remaining carbonaceous material is essentially bio-inactive and is permanently sequestered. The feasibility of using algae to convert carbon dioxide to a biomass has been demonstrated. This biomass provides a sustainable means to produce methane, ethanol, and/or bio diesel. The first application of concept demonstrated by the project could be to use algal biomass production to capture carbon dioxide associated with ethanol production

Using Inequality Measures to Incorporate Environmental Justice into Regulatory Analyses

Formally evaluating how specific policy measures influence environmental justice is challenging, especially in the context of regulatory analyses in which quantitative comparisons are the norm. However, there is a large literature on developing and applying quantitative measures of health inequality in other settings, and these measures may be applicable to environmental regulatory analyses. In this paper, we provide information to assist policy decision makers in determining the viability of using measures of health inequality in the context of environmental regulatory analyses. We conclude that quantification of the distribution of inequalities in health outcomes across social groups of concern, considering both within-group and between-group comparisons, would be consistent with both the structure of regulatory analysis and the core definition of environmental justice. Appropriate application of inequality indicators requires thorough characterization of the baseline distribution of exposures and risks, leveraging data generally available within regulatory analyses. Multiple inequality indicators may be applicable to regulatory analyses, and the choice among indicators should be based on explicit value judgments regarding the dimensions of environmental justice of greatest interest